The groan heard 'round the net...
Let me preface this by saying I know that a LOT of people are going to be unhappy with this decision but it is something that I have been rethinking from the first moment I originally changed my mind. I hope you will hear what I am saying and attempt to understand my viewpoint on the matter. I apologize to those people who are interested in this project that this new change will exclude but know that it is not forever.

I am returning to my original position of making this service 18+ only. There are a few reasons for this and all of them make it easier on me for running this service. Let me tell you the story of how Scribblit came to be and how I came to this decision and why I have returned to it now.

When the first strikethrough happened I was appalled at the way 6A/LJ treated its userbase. They refused to answer questions and clarify things that would have taken only moments to clarify. It was then that I decided to start up my own service and my original intent was always for it to be an 18+ service. I started pimping the planned service in lj_biz and in the original post (found here) there was plenty of support for the project even with the 18+ stipulation.

Then came this latest round which pushed me into high gear and got me motivated to get a functioning site up so bugs could be fixed. I found only one comment on any of my posts that could be even remotely construed as negative to this 18+ rule and it wasn't even negative. I realized that the comments had been made in other people's journals in response to comments that I had left. I don't think this invalidates their opinions, not at all, but the people that really had the issue with it never came and stated to me, in my journal, that they had the issue.

On my BIG post where I asked for volunteers there were probably 200 people at least who all agreed to the terms of being over 18 and willing to help. (The comments have been disabled on that post because people continued commenting asking for a beta account)

So that brings us to today and returning to my original stance of 18+ only and I will address a few things here to clarify and make sure that everyone understands what I know and understand.

1) If underage kids want to read harry potter/yugioh/pokemon/whatever porn they are going to find it no matter what
And this is true. I can set up filters and age limit filters and request that communities be locked down but teenagers are resourceful and they are smart and they will work to get what they want. By visibly making the site 18+ I am protecting MY butt so that if someone comes along and says "OMG YOU HAVE HP PORN AND MY 15 YEAR OLD READ IT!!!" I can say that the site is for 18+ only and if they were on the site, with an account, reading the content then they have lied about their age to read said content. It protects ME.

2) There are plenty of mature teenagers!
Yeah there are. But again, it comes down to one thing: me. This is something that I decided to do and I made up my ground-rules and changed them to follow what I thought were the masses when it wasn't really something I wanted to do. In order for me to be happy and successful in this endeavor I need to feel that I am doing right by me and if I am not that means the service suffers and the users suffer.

3) You know, the site isn't even active and you've already gone back on something you've said. You know how this makes you look doesn't it?
I realize that some people are going to think that I am not to be trusted and that I will sell out first chance I get because of this change but it is not true. I never made any promises that this site would be open to everyone of every age. I have never, unlike with the ads, set in stone (so to speak) what the age limit/restriction for use of this service is.

Basically, what it boils down to is that I am trying to make this as easy on myself so I can provide the best possible service to those who want to join Scribblit when it is live. This means setting up some guidelines that while subjective are done to protect me and my livelihood. Please remember that I work full time during the week and on top of that I have a sometimes debilitating mental illness and I am not willing to make it easier for someone to abuse something that I am doing and get me in trouble.

I realize that many people will think this is selfish and it is. I am looking out for me. I want to provide a good service to the users but I can't do that if I a constantly at risk of being attacked for something with regards to who accesses the site. Making the site 18+ relieves some of that risk.

I'm very sorry to those who are not 18 or won't be 18 when the site goes live but I hope that when you are you will join us.